'TTIP will allow private companies to sue govt. for millions’

Chief negotiators for the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) Dan Mullaney (L) of the United States and Ignacio Garcia Bercero of the European Union (EU) deliver a joint press conference following the sixth round of negotiations at the EU Commission headquarters in Brussels on July 18, 2014. (AFP Photo / Thierry Charlier) / AFP

The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership gives companies the right to sue governments if they think there was “indirect expropriation” of future profits, Glyn Moody, technology writer, told RT.

Some experts claim that TTIP could make a privatization of Britain’s
National Health Service (NHS) irreversible.

RT:How will TTIP really affect the
NHS?

Glyn Moody: What they are saying is rather
clever because it is true that the NHS won`t be directly affected
by TTIP as it is negotiated, but what lots of people are rightly
concerned about is what happens afterwards because there is a
chapter within TTIP which is called the “investor state dispute
settlement” which basically gives companies the right to sue
governments if they think there has been, what they call,
indirect expropriation of future profits. Basically that gives
them a right to profits in the future. Whether that might affect
the NHS, is that we have got a current wave of privatization
going on at the moment. And if in some future situation a Labor
government might want to reverse that privatization which would
be a perfectly natural thing for a government to do. This clause
would kick in and the companies that have taken these parts of
the NHS will say then: “hang on; you are taking our future
profits. We are going to sue you for billions of euro,” and we
know that this kind of thing is happening around the world and
the fear is justified. That is exactly what will happen with the
NHS. So basically privatization will be locked in. You couldn`t
reverse it or rather you could reverse it, but you’d end up
paying billions or possibly tens of billions of euro if you did
so.

RT:The British government has given
assurances that the NHS won't be compromised by this trade deal -
so what are people so worried about?

GM: Not really, because basically the reason the
British government if quite keen on this is that it would
actually lock in the ideology. Even if they lost an election or
were replaced by a Labor government, that Labor government or
coalition government would be unable to reverse their policy. So
this is supposedly a trade deal about how people will get more
money. But in fact it contains within it a particular agenda, a
political agenda. And that is what is problematic about TTIP. It
is not really a trade agreement. It is actually much more about
liberalization and forcing the European Union to change in a
certain way and irreversibly. That is why I think a lot of people
increasingly are worried that TTIP is not going to be a good
idea.

RT:The UK's trade minister says that those
against TTIP are probably motivated by antipathy towards America.
Would you agree?

GM: I disagree. You can see that it is not true
because at the moment there is also a trade agreement being
negotiated with Canada. And in fact that is just coming to a head
now. And people are equally worried about that agreement. So the
argument that it is just anti-Americanism isn`t true. The problem
is with this kind of ISDS (Ability for Corporations to sue
Government) clauses; this ability to sue governments and that
would be present as far as we know in the Canadian agreement too.
People are worried about that. It is clearly isn`t anything to do
with nationalities; it is to do with this problem that companies
can sue governments. They basically can put multinational
corporations on the same level with these governments. Let’s not
forget that these courts are actually just three layers sitting
in a room and deciding these cases. It has nothing to do with the
national law. It is actually circumvents national law. And that
is true of TTIP, the American deal, and CETA (The Comprehensive
Economic and Trade Agreement) which is the Canadian deal. And
both of those are equally problematic. So that has nothing to do
with the anti-Americanism.

RT:There are services already being
contracted to private healthcare companies. In that sense,
opening up to more competition from American firms would only
improve services, would it not?

GM: That is not the issue. We are not talking
about whether people should be allowed to open up to
privatization. Many people would say that it is a good idea. What
we are talking about is the irreversibility of that. Because a
future government might decide that it didn’t work out too well,
so let`s bring it back into the NHS. TTIP would prevent that. So
it is nothing to do with the privatization as such. It is about
irreversibility of privatization.

RT:Why is TTIP being negotiated behind
closed doors?

GM: Interestingly, we do know about a similar agreement which is
the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). An American politician that
has seen TPP actually said: “If the American public could see
what is being negotiated than there would be riots in the
streets. And I think that something very similar is going to be
to TTIP. If people knew what was being negotiated behind closed
doors they wouldn`t stand for it. And what is being done? It is
being set up a kind of fait accompli whereby it will be too late
to do anything when the whole thing is finished. It will be
presented to the public and said: “We are sorry, we can`t
actually change it, you just have to accept it.”

The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.